Only One
by MultiFandomSF
Summary: In which Scully grows wings and never dies. Fin. Please review.
1. Chapter 1

**Only One

* * *

**

Mulder has many images that have never left him; while so much of his life now lies in gaps, there are parts that echo in his dreams and waking hours.

Samantha's smile, abduction. Samantha in starlight.

And of course, there are so many from the torture. From watching Cancerman beat him and the moments he thought he was defeated.

Then there is Scully.

He barely remembers meeting her, and has the few fleeting images of her from the early days—Scully smiling, Scully with barbeque at the side of her mouth, Scully by his side at Christmas time.

Scully in the hospital, Scully dead.

After the apocalypse, he remembers Scully walking through the dead lands, charred remains surrounding her in heaps. Mulder remembers the dark piles of ash and the crackling flames of skyscrapers that hit the ground, smoke filling the eyes and the mouth, while they and Skinner and a few stragglers coughed and struggled over the burning landscape.

He remembers Scully taking off her gold necklace, and believing that right then, she was finally going to discard it.

He remembers feeling horrified.

But she did not.

Mulder sees Scully as she holds the gold chain in her grasp, dangling the cross out of her dirty palm. Now, she walks head down, and he thinks she may be crying. But he never confirms this to be true.

Scully crosses the deadlands eyes closed, head down, swinging the gold pendant from side to side, as if to christen the damned place.

He remembers how she never stumbled and never spoke, but swung the cross from side to side, and never coughed again.

And in that moment, and the others in which he continues to remember the event, Mulder is speechless with wonder and emptiness. For a moment, he embraces the fact that there is nothing left, and that maybe that's a good thing.

And in another time, Scully coughs up blood later and he forgets his forgiveness.

But not now.

* * *

Their mountain community is tiny, but they persevere. On shifts, they journey to the valley below, to monitor the few scientific instruments they have, to check radio logs.

Silence is essential; no one has ever known the aliens' true capabilities, and in a dead world where speech is often lost and the majority of everything is gone, sound travels for miles unrestricted.

Sometimes, when he dreams, Mulder imagines everyone singing in unison, or screaming, shouting "Hello!" and he smiles and thinks the world would connect and struggle could end. But such thoughts would only be relevant if this wasn't the end of the world.

There is never anyone, never any danger. But they are still careful, afraid, and quiet.

It is here Scully begins to scream.

* * *

"MULDER!"

She's shrieking his name and he jumps over rubble in an attempt to find her. There are too many pieces of buildings and he can tell she's in pain but all he can think to say is 'SHH!'

"I'm coming Scully hang on! Hang on!"

She's writhing by a collapse park bench, breath hitched and ragged and she groans and digs her nails into the solid ground beneath her. The sun is going down and drowning in the land, and Mulder is dragging her, half carrying her, trying to move her as she kicks and claws because she can't control her movement anymore, and he can't hear anything now but the rushing of blood in his own ears.

They collapse in a small building, but he keeps going, trying to find a room with a door, or a room more insulated, less out in the open. It is dark now—no moon—and he's fumbling, fumbling with the lantern, with the backpack with emergency water and food.

And Scully, she's almost growling, moaning and screaming at the same time. Teeth clenched so hard he thinks her jaw will lock she's gasping and twisting in his arms.

Now he's practically dropped her, he's holding her pressed against the ground, face up, and she's arching upwards as he pins her wrists and tries to keep her still.

"SCULLY! You've got to…you've got to…try to stay still, calm down! Please, Scully…oh my god…Scully tell me what's wrong! Scully!"

"Mulder! My back oh god my back Mulder make it stop oh please please make it stop…!"

Her last word trails off in to a whimper and another shriek. She's sobbing and gritting her teeth so hard, screams bouncing in her throat, hoarse already, but she's trying to be quiet, just a little.

"MULDER"

"I'M TRYING! I'm trying!"

Rummaging through the backpack, hands hitting metal and tupperware—he switches the lantern _on_—find the small towel and he uncurls her. She's digging her nails into her hands—"Oh god Scully, you've got to hang on on I'm trying I'm trying"—and her knees, he stuffs the washcloth in her mouth so she'll have something to bite. He doesn't even know what's wrong.

Unceremoniously, he rolls her over peels off her shirt. The lantern is dim and she still twisting under him, groaning and crying and Mulder can barely stand it. Her flesh is rolling, her shoulders are shaking—No, not that's not right, _her shoulders_, they're different and the flesh is twisting and the bones look like they're collapsing in: _Oh my god something's trying to get out_, he thinks, but it makes no sense.

"Scully!" He screams, trying to keep her still, "I don't know what's wrong, your shoulders, they're…changing…?"

Mulder can think of no better word as she trembles and shudders against him. He's practically sitting on her, trying to keep her semi-still, and he hopes that there is no ship for miles and miles because by god they might as well be dead.

He's holding her hand and he thinks he will break.

And then he's forced to the side because it is like _Alien_ only from Scully's shoulders, _OH MY GOD_, and then there is twisting columns of sinew and muscle, it is so bright even without so little light, and Scully is shrieking with new found strength as bindings snap forth out of her and into the blackness around them.

Suddenly, it is over.

* * *

"Mu-Mulder?"

"Scully?"

"I can't…something…everything, all the pain…it's gone."

"Sorry, the lantern, I'm trying—trying to find the lantern."

"I can't feel…no, no, I can feel. Something's strange Mulder, something's strange."

Her voice is high, terrified but there is something calm in it too. He doesn't know what has just happened but he can tell from her breathing that something is different.

"Mulder?"

"Just stay still Scully, just lie there for a second, ah here we go here it is—"

The lights goes on and he can see her, red hair glinting in the darkness, eyes turned towards him, and oh god—

He gasps and moves towards her if only to see, he doesn't think he'll ever understand.

"MULDER?"

"Calm…calm you're okay, Scully, you're okay, Scully just lie there for a second, 'k?"

Mulder can no longer control his own breathing and he's gasping quietly for air; from Scully's back there are protrusions that look like wings—covered in blood and perhaps made from leather but they look like wings—

He empties the canteen onto the washcloth, and begins to stroke...them, he thinks he's cleaning off—yes it is blood.

Scully's shivering, he can tell she can feel the sensation but cannot identify its origins, and he's touching and washing the blood from them. They're wings and they're made of leathery muscle and skin, pieces of ivory bone and…he almost laughs—pale, red feathers.

"Wait Scully, wait."

He knows it is wishful thinking, but he is looking for a mirror, maybe there is a bathroom with an unshattered mirror, perhaps the last in the world.

The last unbroken mirror and it is here.

He leads her, without words, only with reassuring hands on the shoulders, to the tiny room and holds the lantern up as he turns her around and carefully guides her head to look back towards the mirror.

"Scully…I don't—"

She gasps and starts to fall, because what she sees is something so impossible that for a moment she does not remember Emily or the poor girls she tried to protect so long ago. Mulder catches her, and tries to catch her tears in his palms, and she starts to sob, not from happiness or sadness.

"I don't understand."

"Shh, shh, I don't either."

He guides her to her feet again, and she stands the same way, gazing at her back through the mirror.

He moves his hands to her back, under the wings and massages gently.

"But Scully?"

His touch turns to whisper of breath and fingers against her skin, she shivers, and her wings unfurl into molded structures of fire and strength. She is gasping, tears in eyes, unable to speak or to comprehend, only to see and believe truly for once in her life.

"I think you're beautiful."

And she is kissing him, kissing him furiously through her tears because she does not know what else to do.

* * *

A/N: X-Files not mine

Please leave me review- good, bad, or if it's just too weird. Be gentle, please.

Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

They make their way up the tattered hillside in the early morning dawn; Scully with a worn coat thrown over the hunchback outline of her back, and Mulder with his arm around her.

In town, people ask where they have been, say they've been worried, question their discoveries. Mulder gives a few one word answers, and Scully quickly wanders off towards their tiny cabin, coat clutched around her shoulders. Neither knows how to broach this development, what reactions would be. At the moment, it's simpler to contemplate for a short while. They do.

When he finally makes it back to the cabin, Scully is sitting on the edge of the bed, back towards him. She has her arms wrapped around herself and is slowly rocking and humming a tune he's never heard. Mulder wraps his arms around her and the pale folded wings against her porcelain skin.

She sighs, and for a moment, it strikes them both that this is a strange reality, one neither of them really believed in. Scully spent her entire life trying to prove herself wrong or right, science or God or both—she never really found either. And Mulder, he…he tried to find his own way and give her life a different meaning as he went. But somehow, the truth was clearer to him now than any other moment.

At some point, Skinner abruptly charges in, assuming from the quiet they're either sleeping or away—they never figure out exactly why he showed up. Startled, Mulder turns around and unblocks the view of Scully's folded wings and Scully, free to move, stands up in shock and surprise. Skinner gasps and grabs a table for support, "Oh my God Dana—" as her wings unfold in fiery glory, reflecting the sunlight filtering in through the window and leaving Skinner in cowering shock.

Neither of them attempt to explain, and for a few minutes they simply look at each other—Skinner frozen in shock, Scully proud and tall, and Mulder between the two.

He speaks abruptly, struggling to get the words out. Haltingly, unsurely, Skinner gasps, "Can you…fly?"

She smiles, a genuine display of happiness for the first time in a long time, and murmurs back: "We'll see."

After a pause, he starts to smile and mumbles that he'll see them later and exits the cabin, practically running. Neither Mulder or Scully know if he'll tell anyone else, neither care. They burst into uncontrollable laughter for a few breathless minutes.

Later on, they lie in bed, lazily gazing at each other. Scully's staring at Mulder, who's absentmindedly stroking her right wing, eventually moving his gaze to meet hers.

"Scully…I think _this_ is the truth."

She props her head up on an elbow, still staring at him, but not with skepticism or amusement, just a blank gaze which signals she's too open to any possibility to care what he says.

Mulder continues with a wandering tone of voice, gaze locked with her blue eyes.

"I think _this_," he says still stroking her wings, "is what we've always been looking for…"

"What is that?"

"That everyone gets some reward, some end to their struggles. Everyone is given a sign or proof that life has meaning, that somehow…things lead up to a climax and don't get worse after that."

Scully stares at him, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

"So what's your reward?"

He pauses for a moment, then smiles back.

"I have you."

* * *

In the end, both fade into myth and legend. Mulder and Scully, the invincible pair who tried to save the world and maybe did—after all, some people survived. As time went on, it became more Scully—an angel or unexplainable phenomenon depending on who one talked to—and Mulder, her devotee and true companion.

People know Mulder died, people know people who helped bury Mulder and were the last to see the woman with wings.

No one anyone knows buried Dana Scully.

In whispers, they say she never died, just flew off and continues around the world to the day, vibrant red hair and sinewy wings that sparkle if you're lucky enough to catch a glimpse.

No one knows what happened to Scully.

But they know that she will never die.

* * *

A/N: X-Files not mine.

Please review,

Thanks to wingedrequiem, because I've never gotten a more satisfying review than yours. I hope this chapter lived up to your expectations; I haven't written X-Files in what seems like a long time now, not sure I ever will again.

Thanks for reading.


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